Malawi wasting top coaches
Malawi football continues to waste its highly-qualified coaches as clubs and Football Association of Malawi (Fam) are failing to employ them all.
Fam’s recent appointment of several under-qualified coaches into national team technical panels has brought into question the association’s seriousness in enforcing Club Licensing System requirements, which compel Super League clubs to hire head coaches with a minimum of Caf B Coaching Licences.
And with 53 Caf A Coaching Licence holders on the football market, the country’s 16 top flight clubs have employed less than half while maintaining their under-qualified assistants.
Fam and local clubs are indeed spoilt for choice as Malawi has 22 Caf B Licence and 122 Caf C Licence holders, with five Caf instructors and nine local instructors.
The country even also has a Caf coaches assessor at its disposal -Fam Technical Director, John Kaputa- who is a trainer of instructors. In total, Malawi football has 889 coaches with either Fam or Caf papers.
National Football Coaches Committee General Secretary, Dave Mpima, said while the top coaches are readily available, it is sad that Fam and clubs are failing to employ them.
Mpima said the status quo has forced the coaches to go to grassroots football where their services are appreciated.
“We cannot force clubs to employ us. They have the right to choose who they want. But we expected Fam to take the lead in hiring coaches with the right qualifications. Otherwise there will be no need for us to obtain higher qualifications when no one is employing us,” he said.
Kaputa said he has since compiled a list of all qualified coaches so that clubs should easily access them.
“We have the list of all coaches with qualifications in Malawi. Clubs can easily access this list whenever they need to,” Kaputa said.
But Silver Strikers General Secretary, Thabo Nyirenda, said clubs also consider other factors when employing coaches.
“Clubs have their own ways of doing things and you would want to employ a coach who understands the culture of a particular club. You may have a good coach but if they do not understand the dos and don’ts at a club, they end up failing,” Nyirenda said
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